A few days ago, I posted the link to the video of retired Lt. Col. Allen West speaking on the subject of terrorism. What I didn't post was the reason that the Lt. Col. is retired. This is the story:
This new Congressman was an extremely popular commander in Iraq . He was forced to retire because during an intense combat action a few of his men were captured. At the same time his men had captured one of the guys who were with the Iraqis who captured his men.
Knowing that time was crucial and his interrogators were not getting anywhere with the prisoner COL West took matters into his own hands. He burst into the room and demanded thru an interpreter that the prisoner tell him where his men were being taken. The prisoner refused so COL West took out his pistol and placed it into the prisoner's crotch and fired. Then the COL told the prisoner that the next shot would not miss. So the prisoner said he would show where the American service members were being taken. The Americans were rescued. Someone filed a report on incorrect handling of prisoners. COL West was forced to retire.
I have very mixed emotions about this event. I don't support the idea of torturing prisoners. However, I am relatively sure that had Lt. Col. West not acted in the manner in which he did, there would have been American deaths as a result. I would like to point out that the prisoner was not harmed in any way--he was simply frightened. If the situation had been a dirty bomb in New York City, would a policeman who acted in a similar matter be disciplined?
I think the thing we need to remember here is that we are at war. People's lives are at stake. The role of our military is to make sure that we lose as few of our men as possible when making sure the terrorists lose as many of theirs as possible. If I were running the government, I would want our enemies to be unsure whether or not they would be tortured. The fact that we have made it very public that we will not torture (or scare) prisoners has not made any difference in the way the terrorists treat our soldiers when they are captured. War is ugly. I think we need to let the people fighting it to be somewhat ugly (within reason--the terrorists was scared--not harmed). Unfortunately, I am not sure that our current military understands that.
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